The Abyss
by Princess Electra
Summary: In which Albus leaves with Gellert, and the world bleeds.


**The Abyss**

**Summary**: In which Albus leave with Gellert, and the world bleeds. Non-linear narrative.

**Warning**: This is a Dark AU where Albus and Gellert stay together. There are some very dark themes and graphic depictions of violence and sex.

* * *

He never forgets Aberforth's eyes. He never forgets the look of shocked betrayal, of disbelief - the moment when his brother realized that Ariana was gone, forever. He remembers his own eyes blurring with tears when the life was snuffed out of her.

For a moment, guilt threatens to overwhelm him. For a moment, he is ready to abandon his destiny - to abandon _him_ \- for her.

For a moment, he wavers.

Then Gellert offers his hand. In the sun, his blond hair glows radiantly like polished gold, crowning his head in a halo of light. The asymmetrical orbs - those entrancing eyes that he could never look away from - stare at him unflinchingly, halfway between a tragic apology and a determined invitation. Time holds no meaning because he is transfixed by Gellert, who is a perfect contradiction with his breathtaking beauty and downright repulsiveness. He wants nothing to do with Gellert; he hopes he never sees him again. In the same breath, he wants to stay by his side forever.

After what seems like an eternity, he chooses. He chooses, and the Fates rejoice. (Or perhaps they weep.)

He remembers Aberforth's eyes because he sees them over and over again. In the eyes of his bitter foes. Sometimes in the eyes of his erstwhile allies. Usually in their final moments before he cuts them down. It is the look of a man who does not know his own inconsequentialism. It is the look of someone who does not comprehend the Greater Good. The hardest choices reap the greatest rewards.

He takes Gellert's hand. He does not look back.

* * *

Every man, woman, and child - every Muggle, witch, wizard, and Squib - knows the name Albus Dumbledore. Many worship his name, and more fear it. After so many years, few would believe that he once fought against his true nature. There was a time when he was far from the ruthless leader the world would come to know.

Even his puppets, the acolytes he trusted enough with meager leadership roles, knew him only as one half of the most powerful pair of wizards to ever live.

He wasn't always like this.

Once, he cried for the suffering of innocents.

When he took his first life at the age of nineteen, he sat in bed aimlessly for days, refusing the meals that Gellert brought him, only allowing himself to be coaxed into drinking a glass of water after becoming dangerously dehydrated.

When he took his second life at the age of twenty-one, it was out of necessity - he was so close to losing Gellert. (Sometimes, it still haunts him.) Although he ambled about listlessly for two days, he could not feel sorry for saving his….lover? Soulmate? There wasn't a profound enough term to describe their relationship.

For numbers three to five, it was similar. They were evil men and women, and he only doled out the justice they deserved. Every time, it got a little easier.

He took the sixth life for personal gain, slaying the Gaunt patriarch to obtain the resurrection stone. Even Gellert - his wonderful, steadfast partner - looked at him with shock. For years, he held back for Albus - because it was Albus who always wanted a peaceful resolution.

He remembers smiling at his lover's bewilderment, brushing his fingers through the silky golden hair.

"This is the necessary amount of force, my love," he told Gellert.

It was his mercy that bred opposition and invited challenge. He scolded himself for taking so long to come to this realization. He tried to be benevolent and forgiving, but the world was neither.

Let it be fear, then.

It was his iron will and unrelenting justice that would bring peace to the innocents, not his tears. Tears were for children.

* * *

In his more contemplative moments, he wonders what would have happened if he did not take Gellert's hand that day. In every scenario, his imagination pales in contrast to reality - a trivial nightmare compared to the beautiful reality in which he lived.

In his dreams, he is standing at the precipice, between the great and terrible destiny he was meant to fulfil and the meek existence he could etch out by himself.

Even in his dreams, he always makes the same choice.

* * *

"What will you do?" Gellert asks him, watching him roll the stone absently between his fingers.

Once upon a time, he hoped the resurrection stone would bring them back - his father, his mother, and Ariana.

"I will raise an army of the undead for us," he vows.

"And your family?"

He touches the pale, soft cheek. Gellert's skin is warm and inviting under his touch. His hand explores instinctively and strokes gently along the long elegant neck. Wordlessly, he sinks his teeth against the pale skin, drawing a hiss from Gellert. He bites down a little too viciously and tastes blood. His own blood pounds with arousal, and he needs to have this man right now.

"I have all the family I need right here," he gasps.

They fuck against the wall of the small, filthy shack. It's messy and passionate, transcendent and revolting. Marvolo Gaunt's corpse lies next to them, his unseeing eyes wide open and transfixed on their obscene act. Gellert tries to turn them away in an effort to regain a semblance of decency, but Albus laughs and holds them firmly in place. He doesn't care. He needs Gellert inside him, around him, a part of him - until his senses can no longer separate one from the other.

Let the whole world see, he mocks.

* * *

The cloak was the final missing piece of their quest. He had no particular use for the cloak, but the Hallows were incomplete without it.

He meant it to be a surprise for Gellert, whose twenty-fifth birthday was fast approaching. If nothing else, he was a romantic.

In truth, it was partly his fault, sneaking around with Elphias Doge to track down the descendants of the youngest Peverell brother. Of course, he should have realized the optics of the situation.

Except he couldn't have known. To him, there were two men in the world: Gellert Grindelwald and everyone else.

Thus, he could not have prepared for the sight that greeted him.

He drops the cloak in horrified shock.

It seems that in his jealous rage, his lover had made quite the mess: Elphias Doge - no, dismembered pieces of the man who was once Elphias Doge decorated the floor of their sitting room. Blood covered nearly every surface, and a metallic smell permeated the small space.

And Gellert - he was in such a state: eyes glinting tearfully in the dark, soaked to his elbows in blood, entrails spattered across his neat three-piece outfit, and crushed pieces of cervical vertebrae clenched between trembling fingers.

"You did this," Gellert accuses him. A single tear flows from his light-coloured eye. The darker left eye glares at him, full of betrayal.

When he recovers from his shock - the shock of losing his oldest friend in such an unfathomably violent manner, he crosses the room and gathers his lover's face between his hands. He runs his fingers through the matted golden hair - and yes, blood drips from the crimson-stained blond hair. For a second, he marvels at the cataclysmal degree of anger displayed before him: not only had Gellert used magic to tear Doge's body apart, he used his bare hands to rip out the other man's throat.

It was monstrous. It was _exhilarating_.

"You did this for me?" he whispers. He leans forward until their foreheads are touching. Gellert smells of death and despair; he inhales deeply, mesmerized.

Gellert doesn't pull away but is still shaking. "You betrayed me."

Albus chuckles and something dangerous glints in Gellert's eyes, but he doesn't let it go any further. He takes his lover's hands - Gellert drops the shattered pieces of Doge's cervical vertebrae; the bones scatter onto the floor meaninglessly.

He studies the fingers, such skilled fingers that brought him to unimaginable climaxes - fingers that have been inside him countless times. He loved these fingers. He takes one of them in his mouth, sucking on it with a slight moan. He recognizes the familiar taste of iron - of blood, his friend's blood. He imagines that bits of Doge's spine are still lodged in the fingernails.

He draws a muffled groan from Gellert and pulls away.

"Never," he hisses. "There is only you, my love." He takes one of Gellert's fingers - the same one he just cleaned with his tongue - and points it to his temple. "Take a look. I want you to see."

He lets Gellert into his mind. He shows him the darkest crevices and his deepest desires. He shows Gellert the depth of his feelings. He doesn't feel vulnerable. (No, he feels powerful. Because Gellert has shown his hand, and now Albus knows the power he has over his golden-haired lover.) Finally, he gives him the answers - the purpose of his secret meetings with Doge and the acquisition of the cloak.

"You did this for me?" Gellert echoes, eyes still shining with tears, but they were tears of reverence.

"There is only you," he repeats.

They collapse on each other, tearing away clothes with a desperate frenzy. His mind registers that they are making love among the desecrated remains of his friend, but that only heightens his arousal. When he feels Gellert's fingers breaching inside, he is filled with a heady thrill, knowing that these fingers were still stained with the evidence of a gruesome murder. Until now, he did not know that Gellert could commit such an act of unspeakable brutality, to be so heedlessly cruel, and Gellert had done it - all for him. He could live a thousand lifetimes and never find a more perfect being.

A while later, lying on the cold floor of their ruined sitting room, caked in filth, blood and their own bodily fluids, Gellert tries to apologize. Albus stops him, kissing him fiercely and messily.

"Never apologize for loving me."

* * *

Magic is might.

And in magic, they were peerless.

Gellert mastered the Elder Wand, while he became known for the things he could do without a wand. He preferred it this way.

Gellert was the charismatic leader who enthralled their earliest acolytes and captivated the magical community during their modest beginnings. It was Gellert who negotiated the surrenders from world leaders of the magical and Muggle communities. It was Gellert who was elevated to the position of Supreme Chancellor.

To the world, Gellert is the symbol of the New World Order. With a handsome face and a warm smile, Gellert shows the people what rewards can be gained from love and obedience.

And if they showed anything less than total obedience, he would be there in the shadows to remind the vermin of their place. Those who obeyed would thrive, and those who resisted soon found that there was no place in this new world for them.

While Gellert basked in the people's love, he thrived in their fear. There were so many forms of joy, but fear always had the same face.

He didn't need a wand. The wand was a symbol of order, of legitimacy. The masses obey the wand, but they fear the shadow. He preferred it this way.

The Peverell brothers spent a long time perfecting magical artifacts. Wasteful, he laments. After all, true magic comes from within.

* * *

Gellert builds a palace in the Austrian Alps.

(Gellert wanted a lavish, elegant design; Albus wanted….purple. Quite insistently. In the end, Gellert compromises because he is a considerate lover, and not because Albus threatened to withhold bedroom activities for the next decade.)

Nurmengard becomes their home, and they do not share. Nurmengard is protected by blood magic and permits passage to no one else. They don't spend nearly enough time at home, as running the entire world is a full-time job. Nonetheless, Albus is pretty sure they have fucked on every surface of their opulent castle.

Meanwhile, he tears down every Ministry of Magic across the globe; symbols of the old world, of magic suppression, cannot be permitted to stand. He burns Durmstrang to the ground - an anniversary gift for Gellert. (One of his many grand romantic gestures.) He leaves Hogwarts standing, because he is not immune to nostalgia, but he enforces strict reform.

To everyone's surprise, he picks the ruins of his former home in Godric's Hollow as the location for their new headquarters.

"There is no better place," he tells Gellert. "This is where it all began."

It wasn't just the place where his mother died, or where Ariana died.

He, too, died here.

When he took Gellert's hand in the waning days of summer long ago, he had sobbed pathetically, clinging to the offered salvation but half-resisting out of misguided remorse. But he understands now. The Greater Good demands sacrifice, and the past must always die.

He thanks the ghosts.

* * *

They talk about Horcruxes only once.

The truth is he never cared about immortality. He and Gellert had finite plans in a finite timeline, and they had mostly accomplished that. Their benevolent rule triumphed as he predicted, and the world was at last at peace. There were no more hungry children, senseless pollution, or useless wars. Now, they educate the next generation to propagate their New World Order.

He didn't care about living forever, but he did want to spend eternity with one other. Splitting his soul could never accomplish that. He needed to _join_ their souls.

* * *

Vinda Rosier asks him about it one day. She voices what many have wondered in silence for a long time. The seasons came and went, leaves fell and snow melted, and the years rolled by, but he and Gellert never changed.

Had they discovered a fountain of youth?

He laughs at that.

It wasn't the Hallows either.

"Dark magic, then?" she asks casually.

He shakes his head. Vinda has her virtues, which is why he relies on her to run most of continental Europe. But she can be so narrow-minded in her views about magic. People always give the Dark Arts too much credit.

"There is a room in Nurmengard Castle that is kept locked at all times," he says to her. "It contains a force that is at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than forces of nature."

She doesn't understand. They never do. No one has explored magic to the depths that he has.

The Dark Arts cannot bind two souls for eternity. There is only one type of magic that can.

* * *

Aberforth dies when he unleashes their undead army on Hogsmeade. Gellert is willing to negotiate, but he counsels against tolerating outright defiance. He prefers to make an example out of them.

Truthfully, he did not know that his brother lived in Hogsmeade. He had not spared a thought for Aberforth in years and had not laid eyes on him for even longer.

When Gellert gives him the news, he replies nonchalantly, "There is only one fate for traitors."

Hogsmeade is never rebuilt.

* * *

He hates Abernathy. He despises the twerpy American and his weasel-like smile.

He is almost amused by Abernathy's blatant schoolboy crush on Gellert. And then there's Gellert, who casually encourages the inappropriate attention. One day, Abernathy works up the audacity to place a hand on Gellert's knee during a discussion on implementing magic to aid the mass production of Muggle vehicles, and he nearly demolishes the entire floor with a well-timed earthquake. Gellert sees his steely glare, but instead of politely rebuffing the acolyte, his lover only smirks at him.

This will simply not do.

He brings Abernathy back to Nurmengard, violating their sacred space. He allows his pet Matagots to mutilate the boy with their vicious claws. Abernathy begs for mercy but he is far from satisfied. He removes Abernathy's eyelids; he wants the boy to see everything. He ties the shrivelling mess to the bedpost.

And that is how Gellert finds them. Abernathy's wounds are soaking the silk sheets dark red, and his agonized screams are practically inhuman.

He pushes Gellert onto the bed and strips him naked. He drinks in the sight of his lover's perfectly toned body. He runs his fingers across the broad chest and well-muscled abdomen. He looks at Abernathy. "See anything you like?" he whispers.

Gellert moans against his mouth, and he nips at the plush lips. He draws blood; he is not in the mood to be gentle. He senses that Abernathy is trying to look away, but the man cannot; he made sure of it.

He grabs Gellert's throat and is pleased when his lover chokes within his grip. He loves seeing this vulnerability. He could end Gellert's life right now. His fingers squeeze a little tighter. His lover is gasping in earnest now, shuddering under his ruthless touch. He glares at him coldly. Gellert is trying to speak, but he does not have enough air in his lungs.

"I - I - love - y - you."

He releases him. Gellert takes in several gasping breaths. He tucks the coughing, sputtering head against his chest; he presses a tender kiss to Gellert's forehead. He distantly notes the terrified whimpers from Abernathy.

"You could have stopped me," he says to Gellert. He shifts until he is straddling his still-recovering lover. He smirks as he feels a firm erection pressing against him.

"I am yours to do as you please," Gellert replies hoarsely, drawing him in for a kiss.

The trust between them was always unspoken, but sometimes it was nice to receive some affirmation.

He pulls away and gives Gellert a look, and he loves that he doesn't need to use words or even Legilimency. Gellert simply knows and gives him a twisted smile. It was simultaneously grotesque and seductive and sent a jolt of excitement straight to his groin.

Gellert adjusts him, and then they are copulating like ferocious beasts. He rides him enthusiastically, and his fingers scrape against Gellert's chest. Their love-making is animalistic, passionate, and filthy - just like them. Magic dances around them; sparks of colour and waves of concussive force accompany their explosive copulation.

Abernathy watches them in horror until the moment he gratefully lapses into oblivion from the blood loss. His blood seeps into the mattress and bathes his masters, who are far too lost in their passions to pay him any notice.

* * *

If he had to divide his life into Before and After, he would choose their first meeting in Bathilda Bagshot's front garden.

In many ways, his existence did not begin until that moment.

He sits on her front porch; he watches as the setting sun falls below the horizon. He cannot bear to leave.

"Did you know that every atom in our bodies was once part of a star?"

Gellert grins at him, sixteen years old but bolder and sharper than men thrice his age. "In that case, we must come from the same star."

* * *

"In a world without permanence," he writes, "you are a perpetual feeling."

* * *

MACUSA is the last to fall.

He gives them a choice (he always does): bend the knee or join the abyss. He has little patience for prisoners.

Of course, repeat offenders are not shown such clemency. He gives them one option: the Veil.

Bravery means very little, he learns. When staring at the choice between submission versus the pain of death and the suffering of one's family, almost everyone capitulates.

* * *

Their subjects - Muggles, witches, and wizards alike - bow reverently as they pass. Their acolytes kneel before them. Outside, the cheering masses are nearly deafening.

Gellert is stunning in his elegant navy outfit; he looks every inch the Emperor. This is his coronation.

Albus walks steadily beside him, looking dangerously handsome in black armour. Today, he wants to be seen - let them see that he is the one who forged their Empire out of blood. No one holds his gaze for long; their eyes dart away nervously.

He cannot help it. He revels in their fear.

They reach the top of the altar. As he stands with the man he loves, peering down at his people, he smiles with a weighted satisfaction:

This is destiny fulfilled.

When Gellert offers his hand, he does not hesitate.

* * *

_"Was aus Liebe getan wird, geschieht immer jenseits von Gut und Böse."_

What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.

**-Friedrich Nietzsche**

* * *

**Author Notes**: And they lived murderously, happily ever after.

Well… that may be the most disturbing piece I've ever written. While procrastinating with the editing of Phoenix Tears, this murderous little plot bunny took me for quite a ride. You may recognize a few themes from Thanos in Avengers: Endgame and Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones, especially when Albus reminisces about "the hardest choices," "let it be fear," and "destiny fulfilled." Also inspired by Dumbledore's speech to Harry in the Deathly Hallows: "I had proven, as a very young man, that power was my weakness and my temptation." It was hard for me to reconcile a ruthless, power-mad Dumbledore with the Dumbledore we know, who believes so strongly in love. Then I thought - why not both? Love can make us do terrible things.

The title comes from another Nietzsche quote: "He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you." I also took a few liberties with a Sanober Khan quote: "In a world full of temporary things, you are a perpetual feeling."

Thank you for reading.


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